3 Alumni Honorees PBT Fast Trackers

Pittsburgh Business Times 2014 Fast Tracker Honorees Include Three Tepper School Alumni

Each year, the Pittsburgh Business Times honors a distinguished group of outstanding next-generation organizational leaders from the Pittsburgh region during the annual Fast Tracker Awards Program. The event is held to honor 40 business, government and non-profit leaders, who are less than 40 years of age, in recognition of significant achievements in workplaces throughout Western Pennsylvania. Three Tepper School alumni and a professor from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science are among this year’s honorees:

Each year, the Pittsburgh Business Times honors a distinguished group of outstanding next-generation organizational leaders from the Pittsburgh region during the annual Fast Tracker Awards Program. The event is held to honor 40 business, government and non-profit leaders, who are less than 40 years of age, in recognition of significant achievements in workplaces throughout Western Pennsylvania. Three Tepper School alumni and a professor from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science are among this year’s honorees:

- Ted Curran, MBA ’04, is the executive director of finance for the Tepper School of Business. In this position, Curran manages all finance and business office operations, and is responsible for managing and reporting all financial information for the business school's general operations, sponsored research, and endowment. He also serves as the primary business liaison for the Tepper School on key projects such as the Workday Human Capital Management and the Administrative Leadership Group.

Curran believes that his education from the Tepper School has helped him immensely in preparing for his current role. “The school’s approach to applying management science and data analysis to a broad array of problems is the perfect program for MBA students that want to learn analytical methods that can be leveraged throughout their career. I graduated 10 years ago and utilize techniques every day that I learned while studying at the Tepper School.”

Steve Fleck, MBA ’04, is the president and CEO of Proximedics, a company that partners with pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to seamlessly integrate powerful RFID functionality into healthcare products, and has provided business and technology leadership for the formation of the company. During the commercial launch and deployment of Proximedics’ breakthrough radio-frequency identification (RFID) products to hospitals across the U.S., Steven led the development of the first FDA-cleared RFID tracking system for use in the operating room, as well as various RFID products for the hospital environment.

Bill McIntosh, MBA ’11 is the founder and president of Synergy Media Group, an audiovisual design and installation company. McIntosh has functioned in almost every key professional role at Synergy since the company’s creation in 2007. By forming relationships with customers, architects and complementary companies, McIntosh helped transform Synergy from a startup into a multi-million dollar firm. He is now responsible for sales, marketing and finance, as well as Synergy’s exciting new growth strategy.

Also being recognized is Luis von Ahn, Ph.D. CS’05, an associate professor in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science and the CEO and co-founder of Duolingo. Duolingo is a website that helps people learn new languages by translating real-world documents. When somebody uploads a webpage to Duolingo for translation, a Duolingo student will translate it in order to practice the language they are learning. When the document is fully translated, Duolingo returns it to the original content owner who, depending on the type of document they uploaded, pays for the translation.

These four Carnegie Mellon alumni, along with 36 other Pittsburgh leaders, were highlighted at the Fast Trackers Awards Ceremony and reception at the Andy Warhol Museum on Pittsburgh’s North Side on the evening of Wednesday, June 25, 2014.